Hey man,
Good to see that you're trying to get back into it. I can kind of relate to your lifestyle. I mean, its not nearly as bad now, however, in the past there's been months/weeks where I work 70-85+ hours. I'm a healthcare professional in the field of critical care, so I work shift work and am on-call occasionally. Given the nature of my work I often miss meals and don't have adequate time to train with the full high volume work outs that my program calls for. It was worse in the past when I was stripping as well as had my regular job, but its definitely better now that I'm done with that.
As you probably know, the key to fitness is diet. If your diet sucks, nothing else will work. Any schmuck can go to the gym 3, 4 even 5 times a week, but unless your diet is good, your gains will always be limited by the amount of nutrition you're taking in.
Proper planning with diet and training is what it is gonna take for you to succeed. If you're not prepared to do the work and plan your shiit out, you might as well quit right now. Here are some general tips that will help you plan:
1. Know your week's schedule ahead of time and work around that. Plan out your meal times, training times, etc. I compare this a little to lining up an appropriate defense in football when you see the offensive formation. You're not gonna stack the line when you have a 5-WR shotgun formation. Similarly, work out times during your week when you can train, and figure out what you're gonna train, and when you're gonna eat, make your food, etc. Plan, plan and then plan some more!
2. Create, and write down your diet and mass produce and refrigerate/freeze your food. I routinely make 5-7 lbs of ground beef, yams, etc. By mass producing food you're basically able to make food for multiple meals but only use a small amount of time. Furthermore, you'll always have access to good wholesome foods in your fridge. I know I eat crap when there's nothing good around in my fridge. I simply CANNOT overstate the importance of diet.
3. Use meal replacement protein shakes. I'm not a huge fan of supplements vs. whole foods, but, sometimes this is all you can do. I mean I can't eat a full meal at my workstation, but there's nothing that says I can't sip a mass gainer or meal replacement shake at my work station. I imagine you're probably the same.
4. I'm not sure what your program looks like, but remember even a quick 30 minute work out is better than nothing. I often have to take a modular approach to my training a train a single small muscle group when I have time constraints, simply due to the volume of work I gotta do.
5. Learn to eat foods that are good, but require minimal prep time. Examples that I can think of include:
- rotisserie whole chickens.
- almonds.
- fruits/veges.
- cottage cheese.
6. Supplement properly. When you're busy and work a hectic schedule, getting in adequate nutrition (both macro and micronutrients) becomes imperative as your body is gonna need all extra juice to stay motivated and perform well despite the long hours. My work, critical care, is life and death, so I gotta always be at my best. I swear by multivitamins, and have recently discovered a great vitamin pack. In your case I'd advise you to definitely invest in a good high potency time release multivitamin, or vitamin pack. Make sure it is specifically formulated for men, and also take a high potency time release B-complex vitamin. B's are amazing for energy, stress response and focus. Other things you should think about are omega 3's, and anti-oxidants.
7. Invest in a cooler. Eating frequently can be a pain in the butt, but you gotta do what you can to make it easy. Coolers allow you to take your food with you wherever you gotta go, whether it be to work, see clients, etc.
8. Surround yourself with people that are fitness minded. Both my fiance and me are competitive physique athletes, and we both have issues of people not understanding our diets/training and lifestyle choices. Most people are supportive, but its always really cool when you meet someone who competes/has competed as they not only can give you tips, but also understand the shiit you're going through. Remember the people you hang out around have a strong influence on who/what you become, so choose your friends wisely.
9. This is obvious, but cut down on drinking. I find drinking to be extremely overrated. I used to basically get semi-hammered before my shows when I was stripping towards the latter part of my career. Although it definitely made the whole experience more fun, and may even have helped my performance, I always felt like crap the next day. Alcohol is metabolic poison, and according to a meta-analysis study by Lancet, (a distinguished medical journal) it is the worst drug when you consider societal, personal health, family costs, etc.
10. Execute and stay consistent. You can have the greatest plan in the world, but nothing matters unless you execute. Staying consistent and positive is difficult, but I promise you the end result is well worth the hard work, sweat, blood and tears that you put into it.
Hope this helps. Let me know if you need me to make a diet or program for you. Good luck!
